Information technology is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. Information technology professionals have recognized for decades the importance of disaster recovery to facilitate business continuity. In information technology, disaster recovery generally involves a series of actions to be taken in the event of major unplanned outages to minimize their adverse effects. For example, there may be instances when computing systems or network infrastructures fail and require recovery or replacement of portions or an entirety thereof due to particular events (e.g., catastrophic events including hacker attacks, computer viruses, electric power failures, underground cable cuts, fire, flood, earthquake, mistakes by administration, etc.).
The related concept of business continuity involves ensuring that an organization's critical business processes, including those utilizing information technology systems, can be maintained in the event of the disaster or catastrophic event. An information technology disaster recovery plan focused on facilitating business continuity typically includes detecting outages or effects of the disaster, notifying affected parties such that the affected parties may take action, isolating the affected systems such that damage cannot spread, and repair and recovery of the critical affected systems such that critical business processes may be resumed.
The repair and recovery of the critically affected systems may include the recovery or replacement of a portion or an entirety of the network infrastructure in order to facilitate the business continuity through the recovery and relocation of computer workloads. For instance, natural disasters, such as a flood or hurricane, may do substantial damage to a computer system or a computer network. If the system is complex, reconstructing the system may be difficult and time consuming.